Friday, 1 December 2006

Look at all the lovely people

Can this handsome man with his beautiful lady wife in front of Times Square possibly be a 'graphic novelist'? Gene and Teresa Yang after the National Book Awards. Gene had the honor of being nominated for his American Born Chinese, in the young readers category. I'd be a runner up in anything if I could be either of the people in that photo (by Mark Siegel, with more of them at First Second Books)* * *For all those whose appetite has been whetted by my words and links re. mr j, I give you his latest. Out of context of the series as a whole, it may not be clear that the titular Hayley Campbell doesn't appear in this example. On seeing it she said; "How come the Mammy gets a nose and I don't?" (click for larger)Well, you see, that's one of our tricks of the trade, those subtle techniques we cartoonists use to differentiate characters.

A whole bunch of these strips can be found in the upcoming DeeVee. The colourful cover above came about when my pal White (who is by day a chartered accountant, you will remember me saying yesterday) said to my pal Evans, the designer, "We're forking out for full color on the cover, so I don't want any of your minimalistic crap." The issue will also contain the next chapter of The Playwright by White and me. We've managed to get out one of these per annum for the last four or five annums. At this rate, by the time we gather it into a book White will be retired and living off his perfectly planned superannuation.* * *Here's an odd item. 'Una curiosidad sobre el From Hell.' On Little Nemo's Kat, a Spanish blog; the writer reports on the finding of an annotated copy of From Hell in his local public library. By annotated I mean thoroughly glossed in blue ballpoint pen in the margins, with cross refs to the notes at the back. He has scanned and reproduced a couple of pages. If anyone can ventilate the Spanish better than Google, send me an update and I'll report further (unless it turns out to be dumb of course). (since I jotted this draft I see the writer has responded to the note I left on his blog, in the comments section of my From Hell post.)* * *Still on From Hell, Mark Clapham commented..."Gull Catchers part two? Very tempting. I'm probably not alone in thinking its one of my favourite parts of the book. The most startling Ripper revelation in recent years was on a recent documentary on the UK's Channel Five, in which a contemporary criminal psychologist was asked to look at the evidence. Her conclusion was that a man who butchered his fellow human beings in such a way probably 'lacked empathy'. "Revelatory indeed. thank god we have experts. I haven't seen the show but i did read about it. Like Alan said, we've got enough for another 24 pages of hilarious ripperology. It was the favourite part of the book for me and my pal Mullins, where we were permitted to unleash our madcap antics that had been kept very much under wraps till then.

7 Comments:

On the subject of American Born Chinese, have you seen this post over on wired? I got fairly worked up when I first read it.

I was particularly pissed off after reading this paragraph (my emphasis on 'genre'):

"I have not read this particular "novel" but I'm familiar with the genre so I'm going to go out on a limb here. First, I'll bet for what it is, it's pretty good. Probably damned good. But it's a comic book. And comic books should not be nominated for National Book Awards, in any category. That should be reserved for books that are, well, all words."

I'm really happy to see you here, although for some time I've been visiting your blog at the First Second site as well (I happen to like most of their publications). That's it for now - thanks again for whatever your works have done to me! :D

I was just going to post the wired column. good timing Emmet.Later on, Luddite made a reply, sort of apologising for the lack of knowlege of graphic novels. but hey, I just think he is getting old, and likes the many responses from his columns.

People marking up library books is an interesting phenomenon; I once checked out a book about old movies in which some displeased soul had written one-word retorts to various authorial opinions (an assertion that W. C. Fields had made no first-rate films was dismissed as "unconcionable," which I had to look up). As a schoolboy I once checked out a book about the Beatles which had a pink sparkly lipstick kiss on the inside front cover. I was excited to think that some anonymous girl had passed this kiss on to me, though more likely she thought of it as kissing the Beatles or was just being whimsical.

Hi again Mr. Campbell. I really appreciate your interest in my post. I have just got to this new reference and if you are interested in it I think I could scan, translate and send you some of the glossed pages (I'd need some days for it). I don't know who wrote them (how could someone be so expert on the topic is something that goes beyond my knowledge), but they are so precise that it may have been William Gull himself ;)